#Sonority plateaus series

A comparison of English speakers to speakers of Russian indicates that the processing of inputs identified as nonspeech is modulated by linguistic experience.

#Sonority plateaus series

In the present series of experiments, we demonstrate that English speakers extend the relevant generalization to a wide range of auditory inputs, irrespective of whether these stimuli are identified as speechlike. Surprisingly, however, the relevant knowledge is not selective with respect to its inputs. The generality of this principle across language modalities, both spoken and signed ( Corina, 1990 Sandler, 1993 Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006), and its robustness with respect to linguistic experience ( Berent, Lennertz, Jun, Moreno, & Smolensky, 2008) render it a particularly strong candidate for a universal restriction on linguistic outputs. This principle has been widely documented across languages, and previous experimental research suggests that English speakers extend this knowledge even to structures that are unattested in their language ( Berent, Steriade, Lennertz, & Vaknin, 2007 Berent, Lennertz, Smolensky, & Vaknin-Nusbaum, 2009). To this end, we scrutinize the sonority sequencing principle (e.g., Clements, 1990 Greenberg, 1978). Instead, we examine whether the two conditions of specialization-the specificity of outputs and inputs-can diverge on their outcomes: Are the same principles that appear to be universal well-formedness conditions on linguistic outputs also applied to nonlinguistic inputs? Our investigation specifically concerns the phonological component of the grammar. In what follows, we do not attempt to directly determine whether the language system is, in fact specialized. Together, these two conditions-the unique structural constraints on the system’s outputs and its selectivity with respect to its inputs-offer a strong test of specialization by design.

As Fodor (1983) puts it, an input-analyzer is domain-specific inasmuch as “only a relatively restricted class of stimulations can throw the switch that turns it on” ( Fodor, 1983, p. A specialized language system should admit linguistic stimuli, but deny access to nonlinguistic inputs. It has previously been proposed that securing the specialization of the system also requires narrow constraints on what qualifies as input. However, such universal structural restrictions would only guarantee that the language system is constrained with respect to its outputs. To the extent that such universal adaptive principles exist, and they are demonstrably robust with respect to the statistical properties of linguistic experience and input modality, this would provide strong suggestive evidence for constraints inherent to the language system itself (but cf. Moreover, if the language system emerged by natural selection, these principles should be functionally adaptive ( Pinker & Bloom, 1994 Pinker, 2003). If language were the product of a specialized system, then one would expect all languages to share universal design principles ( Chomsky, 1980 Fodor, 1983 Jackendoff, 2002 Pinker, 1994). Of the various behavioral hallmarks of specialization, the test from design is arguably the strongest. The debate specifically concerns the specialization of the language system-whether people are innately equipped with mechanisms dedicated to the computation of linguistic structure (e.g., Chomsky, 1980 Pinker, 1994), or whether language processing relies only on domain-general systems ( Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986 Elman et al., 1996 McClelland, 2009). The nature of the human capacity for language is one of the most contentious issues in cognitive science.